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David Bezmozgis
Bezmozgis at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 2014
Born	(1973-06-02) June 2, 1973 (age 51) Riga, Latvia

David Bezmozgis (Latvian: Dāvids Bezmozgis; born 1973) is a Latvian-born Canadian writer and filmmaker, currently the head of Humber College's School for Writers.

Life and career

Educational background

Born in Riga, Latvia, he came to Canada with his family when he was six. He graduated with a B.A. in English literature from McGill University. Bezmozgis received an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television.

Short stories

His short story "Natasha", which originally appeared in Harper's, was included in the Best American Short Stories 2005 collection. His short story "The Train of Their Departure", which The New Yorker featured in its August 2010 issue, is actually an excerpt from his first novel The Free World, released on April 4, 2011, to wide acclaim. His short stories "Tapka" and "The Russian Riviera" were also published in The New Yorker. His short stories "The Second Strongest Man" and "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave" have been published in Zoetrope All-Story. "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave" was also included in the Best American Short Stories 2006 collection.

His short story "Minyan" was published in the Winter 2002 issue of Prairie Fire and won the Silver Medal in the 2003 National Magazine Award for Fiction. His short story "An Animal to the Memory" was also published in Vol. 5, No. 2 (2002) of paperplates. His short story "Rome, 1978" was published in the April 2011 issue of The Walrus.

His short story collection, Immigrant City, was published in 2019.

Books

His first published book is Natasha and Other Stories (2004). Stories from that collection first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's and Zoetrope All-Story. Natasha and Other Stories was chosen for inclusion in Canada Reads 2007, where it was championed by Steven Page.

Bezmozgis' first novel The Free World (2011) was published in 2011. Set in Italy in 1978, Bezmozgis' novel chronicles the experience of Jewish refugees from the USSR. Critics in North America and in Europe have suggested that in this novel Berzmozgis presented through a fictional lens what another Jewish-Soviet immigrant Maxim D. Shrayer had described in his book "Waiting for America" (2007). It was subsequently nominated and shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and for the Governor General's Awards.

Bezmozgis' second novel, The Betrayers (2014) is about a famous Russian Jewish dissident who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, meets the man who denounced him. He also worked on the novel during a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellowship that he received. The novel was published in 2014 by Little, Brown and Company.

Films

Short films and documentaries

In 1999, while still a film student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Bezmozgis directed and wrote his first film, a short 25-minute documentary called L.A. Mohel, which won a major award for student filmmakers. In 2001, Bezmozgis wrote and directed a narrative short film entitled The Diamond Nose (2001), which starred Paul Lieber. In 2003, Bezmozgis directed a documentary entitled Genuine Article: The First Trial (2003), about the recruitment system for hiring law student interns used by Canadian law firms.

Feature films

In 2008 he completed his first narrative feature film, Victoria Day (2009), which he wrote and directed. The film stars Mark Rendall as a high-school hockey star dealing with emerging adulthood pressures and the expectations of his Russian-speaking parents. The film also had its world premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the "World Cinema - Dramatic" category. It was also nominated for a Best Screenplay award at the 2010 Genie Awards. The film has also screened at the Shanghai International Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival, the Hamptons International Film Festival, the Athens International Film Festival, the Seoul International Youth Film Festival, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

In 2015, Bezmozgis wrote and directed his second narrative feature film, Natasha (2015), based on his award-winning short story of the same name. The film stars Alex Ozerov and Sasha K. Gordon. Natasha was released theatrically in Canada by Mongrel Films in 2016. In 2017 the film received Canadian Screen Award nominations for Best Actress (Gordon) and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards.

Bezmozgis and Erik Rutherford cowrote the screenplay for the 2021 film Charlotte, for which they received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022, and a Writers Guild of Canada nomination for Best Feature at the 26th WGC Screenwriting Awards.

Television

Bezmozgis was a writer-producer on the fifth and final season of Orphan Black, writing an episode in 2017 titled, Manacled Slim Wrists.

Personal life

As of 2014, Bezmozgis is married with three children.

Awards

• New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellowship in 2010
• Named as One of the "Top 20 Fiction Writers Under the Age of 40" by The New Yorker in 2010
• Silver Medal in the 2003 National Magazine Awards for Fiction, "Minyan" in Prairie Fire (Winter 2002 - Vol. 23, No. 4)
• Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction, Koffler Centre of the Arts (2005)
• The Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction (2004)
• Commonwealth First Book Prize for Caribbean/Canada (2004)
• Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best first collection of short fiction in the English language (2005)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (2005)
• City of Toronto Book Award (2005)
• JQ Wingate Prize 2005 Fiction, Natasha and Other Stories
• National Jewish Book Award for The Betrayers (2015)
• Edward Lewis Wallant Award for The Betrayers (2014)
• National Jewish Book Award for The Betrayers (2014)

Finalist

• Guardian First Book Award (UK) (2004)
• Governor General's Awards for Literature (2004)
• Borders Original Voices Award (2004)
• Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (2004)
• National Magazine Awards for fiction (2005)
• Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Free World (2011)
• Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Betrayers (2014)
• Giller Prize Immigrant City (2019)

Work (short stories) available online

• An Animal to The Memory in paperplates (2002 - Vol. 5 No. 2)
• Tapka from The New Yorker (May 19, 2003)
• The Second Strongest Man from Zoetrope All-Story (Summer 2003 - Vol. 7 No. 2)
• Natasha in Harper's Magazine (May 2004)
• The Russian Riviera from The New Yorker (May 30, 2005)
• A New Gravestone for an Old Grave from Zoetrope All-Story (Summer 2005 - Vol. 7 No. 2)
• The Train of Their Departure from The New Yorker (August 9, 2010)
• Rome, 1978 from The Walrus (April 2011)

Bibliography

Novels

• The Free World (2011) (Viking Press)
• The Betrayers (2014) (Little, Brown and Company)

Short story collections

• Natasha: And Other Stories (2004) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Immigrant City (2019)

Selected short stories

• Minyan Archived 2015-11-26 at the Wayback Machine in Prairie Fire (Winter 2002 – Vol. 23, No. 4) (silver-medal winner, National Magazine Awards)
• An Animal to The Memory in paperplates (2002 - Vol. 5 No. 2)
• Tapka from The New Yorker (May 19, 2003)
• The Second Strongest Man from Zoetrope All-Story (Summer 2003 - Vol. 7 No. 2)
• Natasha in Harper's Magazine (May 2004)
• The Russian Riviera from The New Yorker (May 30, 2005)
• A New Gravestone for an Old Grave from Zoetrope All-Story (Summer 2005 - Vol. 7 No. 2)
• The Train of Their Departure from The New Yorker (August 9, 2010)
• Rome, 1978 from The Walrus (April 2011)

Filmography

As writer and/or director

References

1. Ghert-Zand, Renee (11 April 2019). "Author David Bezmozgis mines meaning of migration in new short story collection". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
2. "Former NMA winners land on Giller shortlist". National Magazine Awards. Oct 17, 2011. Retrieved Nov 12, 2019.
3. "David Bezmozgis". The Walrus. 26 March 2019. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
4. "Immigrant City - David Bezmozgis - Hardcover". HarperCollins Canada. Retrieved 2022-12-08.
5. Lacey, Josh (August 20, 2004). "Home and away". The Guardian. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
6. Barber, John (October 4, 2011). "Generation Giller: New young writers dominate Canada's richest fiction prize". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
7. Barber, John (October 11, 2011). "Edugyan and deWitt add GGs to long list of nominations". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
8. Clark, Andrew (August 17, 2014). "David Bezmozgis: Ukraine is a broken country – that's what attracted me to writing about it". The Guardian. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
9. "David Bezmozgis :: Genuine Article". bezmozgis.com. Archived from the original on November 26, 2015. Retrieved Nov 12, 2019.
10. Taylor, Kate (June 18, 2009). "Victoria Day". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
11. Lynch, Brian (June 17, 2009). "Victoria Day plumbs teen turmoil". The Georgia Straight. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
12. "Author David Bezmozgis brings his steamy 'Natasha' off the page and onto the screen". The Times of Israel. April 28, 2017. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
13. Brent Furdyk, "2022 Canadian Screen Award Nominees Announced, ‘Sort Of’ & ‘Scarborough’ Lead The Pack" Archived 2022-03-08 at the Wayback Machine. ET Canada, February 15, 2022.
14. Ilana Zackon, "Sort Of leads WGC Screenwriting Awards nominations". Playback, March 4, 2022.
15. Bezmozgis, David. "The End of American Jewish Literature, Again". Tablet Mag. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
16. Docx, Edward (May 14, 2011). "The Free World by David Bezmozgis – review". The Guardian. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
17. "Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2004". Writers' Union of Canada. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
18. "Émigré Novelist Takes Jewish Fiction Prize". The New York Jewish Week. January 14, 2015. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
19. "Edward Lewis Wallant Award". Hartford University. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
20. "Past Winners - Fiction". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
21. Deborah Dundas, "Michael Crummey, Ian Williams are in, Margaret Atwood and André Alexis are out on Giller Prize short list". Toronto Star, September 30, 2019.

External links

• David Bezmozgis at IMDb
• Official website
• Online interview from CBC Words at Large
• Interview from INTHEFRAY Magazine Archived 2007-10-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Interview with Georgetown University's Program for Jewish Civilization

• 1973 births
• Living people
• Film directors from Toronto
• Jewish Canadian writers
• Canadian male short story writers
• 21st-century Canadian novelists
• Canadian male novelists
• Latvian Jews
• Latvian emigrants to Canada
• USC School of Cinematic Arts alumni
• McGill University alumni
• 21st-century Canadian short story writers
• Canadian male screenwriters
• 21st-century Canadian male writers
• Screenwriters from Toronto
• 21st-century Canadian screenwriters
• Jewish film people
• Amazon.ca First Novel Award winners